Motivation and Experiences of Wim Hof Method Practitioners

Hello!

So a while ago we sent out a survey asking people about their experience with the Wim Hof Method.

This was a survey done in collaboration with RMIT university

and it asked questions on what kind of impact the Wim Hof Method had on a person’s health and wellbeing.

The response was fantastic!

So many people, from different backgrounds, countries,

all participated to give us their feedback.

The survey, was complete!

Aaaaannd we spent a lot of time just sitting on the results not doing much with it.

So instead of publishing it as a blog and calling it a day,

we decided to take the survey and turn it into something fun, like an animation!

We hope you find it as useful and enjoyable as we did.

But before we start, a bit of housekeeping:

Firstly, the survey was of course, anonymous.

The survey largely focused on the individual’s experiences with the Wim Hof Method.

And secondly, this is still a survey,

these are the stories and experience of those practicing the Wim Hof Method.

These experiences are subjective and haven't undergone scientific investigation.

But,

with that said,

the aim was to gather enough feedback from enough different people

to hopefully find trends and patterns.

The survey itself was designed by RMIT University and 3252 people participated in it.

That's housekeeping taken care of!

Let's look at this survey!

The survey mostly starts off throwing soft balls,

asking about how the person practices the Wim Hof Method.

How long they’ve been practicing.

How often they do it.

How long they like to do it for, ect.

With this, we can guess what the average practitioner looks like.

The average Wim Hof Method practitioner has been practicing for roughly 1 year,

likes a cold shower for up to 1 minute with the breathing exercise in the morning before breakfast.

These were the most popular answers and if this roughly looks like your practice,

well done!

Pour yourself a nice cuppa joe and get ready for breakfast!

Talking about breakfast,

these questions are interesting but the real 'hagelslag met pindakaas' of the survey

would definitely have to be whether the method had a measurable impact on the person’s life,

in terms of health and wellbeing.

This splits the survey up into 3 parts that explore this.

First a look at how the method affects health.

Second

how the method affect specific medical conditions.

And lastly,

sorting through the HUGE amount of anecdotal feedback we received.

And there was A LOT of written feedback.

You guys really like writing!

So, let’s start with health.

The question was:

Please indicate how your health has changed

after practicing the Wim Hof Method.

With this, a list was provided to be graded on everything from energy levels

to overall general health.

Graded whether or not the WHM made things better or worse.

Majority of this data was positive.

Let’s look at the top 5 overall improvements.

These were the improvements that received both a lot of responses

AND a lot of positivity.

Number 1. Resistance to Cold

This was the condition that had the highest reported improvement from the entire list.

This would make sense because the method focuses on cold training.

2: Energy Levels

The method does have a lot of physiological benefits.

A lot of good hormones being released.

A lot of mental positives.

So energy levels being raised and rated this high fits in very nicely.

3 & 4: Mood & mental focus

There seems to be a lot of cognitive benefits reported by the participants.

So these two being rated so highly is great!

5: General health

General health improvement received a high positive response.

Meaning that the health or wellbeing of the person was felt to have improved overall.

These were the top 5 most positive responses.

The rest of the list did well too,

such as coping with stress, athletic, performance, pain tolerance and recovery.

But these were the 5 that stuck out in response and positivity.

This portion of the survey was meant to be a broad look at a person’s health practicing the Wim Hof Method.

And the wonderful news is that it seems that people are experiencing a good mix of physical and mental benefits!

So this was the broad health overview.

But what about specific medical conditions?

The survey provided a list of medical conditions and would ask if any of them applied to the person

and if it did,

would follow up with:

What is the effect of the Wim Hof Method on your condition?

Asking the person if the Wim Hof Method made their condition Much Better or Much Worse.

And if it increased or decreased their reliance on other treatments.

If this applies.

Lets look at the top 3 most improved, most responded conditions:

1: Stress

2: Tiredness and Fatigue

3: Anxiety

These were the 3 conditions that improved the most.

Which is wonderful, the method having this kind of positive improvement is great.

But, consider this:

These conditions could reasonably affect plenty of people.

Stress for example does affect a lot of people.

And there will be a higher response rate for those conditions considered more “common”.

So what about conditions that reasonably affect fewer people?

Like arthritis?

This makes the response rate for these conditions lower and less visible on the survey.

Despite them still having positive results!

So we made a follow up top 5 of the more specific conditions that still yielded great results:

1: Depression

2: Back pain

3: Insomnia

4: Arthritis

5: Chronic pain

These conditions stood out as participants found overall the Wim Hof Method improved them.

These were the results for the specific medical condition portion.

The top 3 had a very high response and positivity.

The follow up top 5 were more specific yet still had great results.

and other positive effects were also reported for allergies, PTSD, asthma, digestive problems etc.

But these were the broad outline of the results and we hope people find this information helpful.

Lastly, the anecdotal portion of the survey.

People from all different backgrounds shared their stories, gave feedback, successes & failures,

their thanks, everything.

Honestly, it is overwhelming how wonderful this was.

Some of the comments were very short 'thank yous',

some were full written letters.

We read through all of them.

Which took a while because there was a lot to read.

But, thank you for writing in and thank you for all the happy and kind comments.

What we essentially did was separate all the comments into their respective topics.

Some comments focused on depression, others on headaches, or addiction and so on.

These were the experiences and stories from the participants.

Their own victories, challenges, adventures neatly categorized in their topics.

Because there was such a big bulk of comments.

We decided to use the top 5 from the specific medical survey

as a frame and share with you some relevant comments:

Topic 1: Depression & mental health.

This topic was mentioned the most and almost all reported improvement.

This method completely changed my life!

I was suffering from depression and anxiety and within 4 days from starting Wim Hof Method 95% of that was gone!

I have only had a few days where my anxiety was somewhat over normal levels.

Depression is 99% gone and it's been almost two years!

It's incredible what this can do and I will continue practicing for as long as I can breathe

Insomnia:

After multiple failed efforts to fix my terrible sleep quality,

the Wim Hof Method completely cured my insomnia immediately.

Within my first week, my "Sleep Score" on my device went from never scoring over 30%

to being in the 90's consistently every night.

Arthritis & chronic pain:

This has had a profound effect on the chronic pain and arthritis from a herniated disc in my lower back

as well as a pinched nerve from bulging disc in my neck.

It is also something I use when I wake in the middle of the night and can't get back to sleep,

it has an incredible effect on helping me get back to sleep in these cases,

as well as greatly improving my mood.

It has had an incredibly positive effect on my life.

I appreciate the opportunity to add my drop of water to the ocean of positivity you are all creating.

Thank you.

And finally to conclude:

This was the broad overview of the survey.

Condensing the most interesting parts into a neat little animation.

We explored the Wim Hof Method's effectiveness in relation to a person’s health

and specific medical condition.

We think overall it had some very positive results

and we really hope those of you watching find it encouraging and at the very least interesting.

Of course there was a lot more to the survey and its important to acknowledge this,

but it is also very useful to have a nice highlight,

a nice summary of this survey.

Thank you RMIT for organising the survey and thank you to those who participated.

We appreciate the support and help!

Lastly as always, thank you for watching.

And we’ll see you next time.